Carver caused a stir in the industry in the mid-1980s when he challenged two high-end audio magazines to give him any audio amplifier at any price, and heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d duplicate its sound in one of his lower cost (and usually much more powerful) designs. Two magazines took him up on the challenge.

First, The Audio Critic chose a Mark Levinson ML-2 which Bob acoustically copied (transfer function duplication) and sold as his M1.5t amplifier (the Ã¢â‚¬Å“tÃ¢â‚¬

Stereophile, 1985: The fall witnesses the infamous challenge in which Bob Carver claims he can match the sound of his inexpensive solid-state amplifier to an expensive Conrad-Johnson monoblock (Vol.8 No.6).